Free and Open Source Software

Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) has taken many initiatives for promoting and fostering the adoption of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) in view of various inherent advantages like increasing interoperability, developing local capacity/ industry, reducing costs, conserving foreign exchange, achieving vendor independence, enabling localization and reducing piracy/copyright infringements. India’s strength in Information Technology can be further utilized to develop products using FOSS which will help in bridging the digital divide with significant cost savings and facilitate the creation of a knowledge society. Indian industry/SMEs can benefit from the liberal licensing norms of FOSS which enables software to be freely modified and distributed.